Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @05:18AM
from the paging-manfred-macx dept.

kodiaktau writes "Google is working to deliver a heads-up display allowing users access to email, maps and other tools through a wearable interface. According to the NY Times' sources, the device will be available later this year, and sell for prices comparable to smartphones. 'The people familiar with the Google glasses said they would be Android-based, and will include a small screen that will sit a few inches from someone’s eye. They will also have a 3G or 4G data connection and a number of sensors including motion and GPS. ... The glasses will have a low-resolution built-in camera that will be able to monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings and friends who might be nearby, according to the Google employees. The glasses are not designed to be worn constantly — although Google expects some of the nerdiest users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed.'"

My thoughts exactly. I got exited at the prospect of practical AR glasses finally arriving on the market ("practical" meaning more or less affordable, and well designed so that you can actually wear them in public), but got disappointed when reading that it is Google releasing them. Remember that they will not just be looking, but analysing and interpreting as well.

Give them a few years to develop this further and combine it with their other data (face recognition for instance), and you get something like the following sitting in a Google server somewhere.
SUBJECT: John Doe (Google ID 1312.11.552.874.5)
EVENT: Observation of known person
OBJECT: Jane Doe (Google ID 7823.14.461.551.6)
Identified by tagged photo, 78 hits, average match 87%, confidence after cross-correlation 99.12%
DURATION: 14 seconds total, eye motion analysis breaks down as follows:
- face: 2 seconds
- chest: 5 seconds
- posterior: 4 seconds
- legs: 3 seconds

I'm actually quite interested in when these will be available as normal prescription glasses lenses. I think this is a lot of geeks wet dream. Heck you could even possibly replace the lenses themselves with a modified display that uses a camera and alters the image to your prescription. Given the imaging resolution would have to be high enough and it would have to have a fast enough response time. This is like the holy grail of all technology beyond being directly connected to your computer via your brain.

Honestly, just using a modified pair of prescription lenses would work... for now.